'You know that you can say what you please,' he replied, without any outward sign of annoyance. 'Even heroics.'
'But,' she said, nursing her knee and swinging backwards and forwards, 'we have forgotten one thing—the most important thing of all, in fact. My poor boy, there is no more chance of your being engaged to Armorel than of your entering into the Kingdom of Heaven.'
'Why?'
'Other girls you might catch: you are tall and big and handsome; and you have the reputation of being so very, very clever. Most girls would be carried away. But not Armorel. She is not subdued by bigness in men, and she doesn't especially care for a clever man. She is actually so old-fashioned—think of it!—that she wants—character.'
'Well! What objection would that raise, I should like to know?'
Zoe laughed softly and sweetly.
'Don't you see, dear Alec? Oh! But you must let Armorel explain to you.'
CHAPTER XV
NOT TWO MEN, BUT ONE
Great is the power of coincidence. Things have got a habit of happening just when they are most likely to be useful. It is not on the stage alone that the long-lost uncle turns up, or the long-missing will is found in the cupboard. And you cannot invent for fiction anything half so strange as the daily coincidence of common life. A tolerably long experience of the common life has convinced me of this great truth. Therefore, the coincidence which happened to Armorel on the very day when the young dramatist unfolded his griefs will not, by wise men, be thought at all strange.